late Old English hyttan, hittan "come upon, meet with, fall in with, 'hit' upon," from a Scandinavian source, cf. Old Norse hitta "to light upon, meet with," also "to hit, strike;" Swedish hitta "to find," Danish and Norwegian hitte "to hit, find," from Proto-Germanic *hitjanan. Related: Hitting. Meaning shifted in late Old English period to "strike," via "to reach with a blow or missile," and replaced Old English slean in this sense. Original sense survives in phrases such as hit it off (1780, earlier in same sense hit it, 1630s) and is revived in hit on (1970s).

Underworld slang meaning "to kill by plan" is 1955 (as a noun in this sense from 1970). To hit the bottle "drink alcohol" is from 1889. To hit the nail on the head (1570s) is from archery. Hit the road "leave" is from 1873; to hit (someone) up "request something" is from 1917. Hit and run is 1899 as a baseball play, 1924 as a driver failing to stop at a crash he caused. To not know what hit (one) is from 1923.

n.

late 15c., "a rebuke;" 1590s as "a blow," from hit (v.). Meaning "successful play, song, person," etc., 1811, is from the verbal sense of "to hit the mark, succeed" (c.1400). Underworld slang meaning "a killing" is from 1970. Meaning "dose of narcotic" is 1951, from phrases such as hit the bottle.

hit

Anything very successful and popular, esp a show, book, etc: He wrote two Broadway hits(1815+)

A stroke of good fortune at gambling, on the stock market, etc; lucky break: a big hit on the commodities exchange(1666+)

A premeditated murder or organized-crime execution, esp one contracted for with a professional killer: ''He can order a hit,'' a police officer says/ There is no set price for a hit(1970+ Underworld)

A stroke of severe criticism; attack; assault: the club hired the firm to counter the hits it was taking in the media/ Zavala took a double hit because her husband also refused to cross the picket line(1668+)

A dose, inhalation, etc, of narcotics; fix •Hit the pipe, ''smoke opium,'' is found by 1886: The current price of cocaine was about $10 a ''hit''/ He held a long hit in his mouth, then expelled it slowly(1951+ Narcotics)

The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D.Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers.Cite This Source

hit in Technology

1. cache hit. 2. A request to a web server from a web browser or other client (e.g. a robot). The number of hits on a server may be important for determining advertising revenue. In the course of loading a single web page, a browser may hit a web server many times e.g. to retrieve the page itself and each image on the page. In contrast, caching by browsers and web proxies reduces the number of hits on the server because some requests are satisfied from the cache. 3. To press and release a key on the keyboard. Some prefer the less aggressive "tap". (2000-02-20)